Thank You For Your Service
Nov. 19th, 2023 08:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meanwrightOne of the things I hate most in life is someone saying, "Thank you for your service." It feels plastic and it feels performative. It feels like someone is using me to show other people how good a person they are by, perhaps, "supporting" the military through the appreciation of former service members. It feels fake. It is this cringe.*
[INSERT CARTOON HERE]
I'd had this reaction when someone showed this clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm on twiXter the other day, and then I saw this video with Heidi Urben and Peter Feaver subtitled
"The Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the U.S. Military," which discusses his book Thanks for Your Service." Which is an interesting discussion on Americans' "support" for the their military.** I'd like to think the two were related, that someone had watched the interview and then posted the
The general idea in the discussion was that, in surveys, Americans tend to have strongly favorable opinions about their military - in contrast to the Congress, the IRS and the DMV. This is has changed markedly from when I enlisted, when we were forced to sit through lectures during boot camp on how to respond to people who might accost you in the street and to tell you how much they hated "you bald, baby-murderers." Apparently, however, public confidence in the military soared after Desert Storm, and more after Iraq -- although there's been a precipitous drop after 2020.
Americans often try to toe the line between "supporting the troops" and disparaging the military apparatus. But they often fail. Famously, although people like to say things nice about servicemen, they tend to look down on them. Famously,
This is in line with Clinton's dismissive "deplorables" comment and Obama's "they get bitter, they cling to their guns...to explain their frustrations" because, in fact, the people serve in uniform are taken from the class of Americans the Harvardian branch most enjoys pissing on. As Feaver notes, these are the sentiments of the Phil Silvers Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, and Stripes. When these people led the country, in the oval office or in the Senate, that's what they thought of you. But they smile and they say "Thank you for your service," you stupid rube.
Feaver doesn't discuss the perversions of his fellow Branch Harardians in the interview, but he does doubt that the American public has as high an opinion of the military as Americans publicly opine. He believes that the social desirability of being seen as caring for military personnel leads people to pretend to respect these benighted dregs. He says that using Advanced Survey Technology(*3) you can tell that people are performing for social status. It's not just Freudian slips that tell you the disdain the military, its cryptoscience. The condescension I feel oozing out of people who "thank [me] for [my] service" is real.
What Feaver worries about is that this ingratiation to servicemen has made the American serviceman too proud of his position.(*4) Being continually told that "you are part of the greatest fighting force in history" gets to his head. This attitude in turn affects how soldiers feel about civilians. Urben notes (perhaps from Feaver's book) that 59% of veterans thought people did not serve in the military during a time of war should feel ashamed -- something both Urben and Feaver think is worrying. Because "part of the American promise is that you have the freedom to choose" to join the military,(*5) "this idea that they are somehow lesser because they did not serve is problematic."
I don't see how this follows: if you were forced to do something, there is no moral weight to having done it, but if you are free to choose to do it or not, there can be something laudable about it. The same may be true negatively: if you're forced to do something, you should be exonerated, if not, it's possible you should be condemned. The stipulation in a time of war rather than in peacetime or at any time implies that there is some necessity for use of the armed forces, and if that really is true, then hitching up is the commendable and shirking is damnable.
But like I just wrote: I don't believe people when they say "thank you for your service," and when I heard them say "this is the greatest fighting force in history," and so on, I have always felt they were being over the top. So, although I do think that the second reason, that service members are likely to think of their thankers as shirkers -- and as Feaver notes, people who've been in the military never say that awful phrase -- I doubt the posturing of politicians and the public has little to do with it. They are just judging the worth of people who made a moral choice that they think is odious in its selfishness.
And this is not problematic. People with different values look down on each other all the time. What makes it problematic is that one set of people feel that the other lack any worth because serve the common will, something that they think is stupid. They therefore think the people that protect them are stupid.
Too stupid to understand what they really mean when they say, "Thank you for your service."
-----
Notes:
* "The real heroes are still there" is just as awful a line.
** Despite getting the the Marines' enlistment options wrong. It was always the Army that had the two-year enlistment. The Marines have a minimum four year regular enlistment (although some technical specialties require a 2+4 year contract - like radar technicians). I was surprised enough at this that I did look it up, and the Marines still have eight year contracts, most commonly a 4+0+4 (active+reserve+irr), but also 2+4+2 (the standard reserve contract) and 0+6+2 (the 92-day reservists who enroll in college).
The problem isn't that he's wrong in the fact, it's that he uses the fact to suggest that the Marines meet their recruiting goals by having such weak requirements. Which is the opposite of the Marines' philosophy, which says that if you want to attract good marines, make enlisting an accomplishment. People, especially young men, want to feel accomplished and are willing to give up four years of their lives for the chance to prove that they have mettle.
(*3) Probably implicit association tests, but possibly some other highly regarded pseudo-science. According to this, up to 27 percentage points of people who say they have "high confidence" in the military are doing so are flat out lying - mostly women, minorities, Democrats, and the Branch Harvardians. I'll have to read the book and look up some of the references to flesh out how much I actually believe all this.
(*4) See (*2).
(*5) This is false, actually. Only in the last fifty years have we paid anything like lip service to it, and that's because there's been no need to for people to be compelled to do their duty as citizens. The little wars of the 2000's, like the little wars pre-WWII, have not required meaningful mobilization because their outcome was not, really, ever going to affect the country all that much. They were more for domestic political reasons, massive killing deployments whose rationale was to show people how much politicians cared about their worries about terrorism. So much so that you could think of the Iraq War, Afghanistan, and so on as George W. Bush and Barack Obama looking directly at likely voters and smarmily saying the political equivalent of "Thank you for your service."
Want to talk about, but gets too far off track:
I'd had this reaction when someone showed this clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm on twiXter the other day, and then I saw this video with Heidi Urben and Peter Feaver subtitled
"The Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the U.S. Military," which discusses his book Thanks for Your Service." Which is an interesting discussion on Americans' "support" for the their military.** I'd like to think the two were related, that someone had watched the interview and then posted the
The general idea in the discussion was that, in surveys, Americans tend to have strongly favorable opinions about their military - in contrast to the Congress, the IRS and the DMV. This is has changed markedly from when I enlisted, when we were forced to sit through lectures during boot camp on how to respond to people who might accost you in the street and to tell you how much they hated "you bald, baby-murderers." Apparently, however, public confidence in the military soared after Desert Storm, and more after Iraq -- although there's been a precipitous drop after 2020.
Americans often try to toe the line between "supporting the troops" and disparaging the military apparatus. But they often fail. Famously, although people like to say things nice about servicemen, they tend to look down on them. Famously,
You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.John Kerry of Massachusetts
This is in line with Clinton's dismissive "deplorables" comment and Obama's "they get bitter, they cling to their guns...to explain their frustrations" because, in fact, the people serve in uniform are taken from the class of Americans the Harvardian branch most enjoys pissing on. As Feaver notes, these are the sentiments of the Phil Silvers Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, and Stripes. When these people led the country, in the oval office or in the Senate, that's what they thought of you. But they smile and they say "Thank you for your service," you stupid rube.
Feaver doesn't discuss the perversions of his fellow Branch Harardians in the interview, but he does doubt that the American public has as high an opinion of the military as Americans publicly opine. He believes that the social desirability of being seen as caring for military personnel leads people to pretend to respect these benighted dregs. He says that using Advanced Survey Technology(*3) you can tell that people are performing for social status. It's not just Freudian slips that tell you the disdain the military, its cryptoscience. The condescension I feel oozing out of people who "thank [me] for [my] service" is real.
What Feaver worries about is that this ingratiation to servicemen has made the American serviceman too proud of his position.(*4) Being continually told that "you are part of the greatest fighting force in history" gets to his head. This attitude in turn affects how soldiers feel about civilians. Urben notes (perhaps from Feaver's book) that 59% of veterans thought people did not serve in the military during a time of war should feel ashamed -- something both Urben and Feaver think is worrying. Because "part of the American promise is that you have the freedom to choose" to join the military,(*5) "this idea that they are somehow lesser because they did not serve is problematic."
I don't see how this follows: if you were forced to do something, there is no moral weight to having done it, but if you are free to choose to do it or not, there can be something laudable about it. The same may be true negatively: if you're forced to do something, you should be exonerated, if not, it's possible you should be condemned. The stipulation in a time of war rather than in peacetime or at any time implies that there is some necessity for use of the armed forces, and if that really is true, then hitching up is the commendable and shirking is damnable.
But like I just wrote: I don't believe people when they say "thank you for your service," and when I heard them say "this is the greatest fighting force in history," and so on, I have always felt they were being over the top. So, although I do think that the second reason, that service members are likely to think of their thankers as shirkers -- and as Feaver notes, people who've been in the military never say that awful phrase -- I doubt the posturing of politicians and the public has little to do with it. They are just judging the worth of people who made a moral choice that they think is odious in its selfishness.
And this is not problematic. People with different values look down on each other all the time. What makes it problematic is that one set of people feel that the other lack any worth because serve the common will, something that they think is stupid. They therefore think the people that protect them are stupid.
Too stupid to understand what they really mean when they say, "Thank you for your service."
-----
Notes:
* "The real heroes are still there" is just as awful a line.
** Despite getting the the Marines' enlistment options wrong. It was always the Army that had the two-year enlistment. The Marines have a minimum four year regular enlistment (although some technical specialties require a 2+4 year contract - like radar technicians). I was surprised enough at this that I did look it up, and the Marines still have eight year contracts, most commonly a 4+0+4 (active+reserve+irr), but also 2+4+2 (the standard reserve contract) and 0+6+2 (the 92-day reservists who enroll in college).
The problem isn't that he's wrong in the fact, it's that he uses the fact to suggest that the Marines meet their recruiting goals by having such weak requirements. Which is the opposite of the Marines' philosophy, which says that if you want to attract good marines, make enlisting an accomplishment. People, especially young men, want to feel accomplished and are willing to give up four years of their lives for the chance to prove that they have mettle.
(*3) Probably implicit association tests, but possibly some other highly regarded pseudo-science. According to this, up to 27 percentage points of people who say they have "high confidence" in the military are doing so are flat out lying - mostly women, minorities, Democrats, and the Branch Harvardians. I'll have to read the book and look up some of the references to flesh out how much I actually believe all this.
(*4) See (*2).
(*5) This is false, actually. Only in the last fifty years have we paid anything like lip service to it, and that's because there's been no need to for people to be compelled to do their duty as citizens. The little wars of the 2000's, like the little wars pre-WWII, have not required meaningful mobilization because their outcome was not, really, ever going to affect the country all that much. They were more for domestic political reasons, massive killing deployments whose rationale was to show people how much politicians cared about their worries about terrorism. So much so that you could think of the Iraq War, Afghanistan, and so on as George W. Bush and Barack Obama looking directly at likely voters and smarmily saying the political equivalent of "Thank you for your service."
Want to talk about, but gets too far off track:
- Worse, 19% of Americans think military rule would be better than democratic procedures.
